Waterloo Co-op: A Blessing and a Curse

I did Waterloo engineering co-op as well and yes, it is a bit hectic, but at that age you can handle it. I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I had interesting jobs in a number of different countries. I invested my interest-free student loan in energy mutual funds which turned into a goldmine at that time and combined with my salary I finished university with lots of experience, no debt and a ton of money in my bank account. If that is a "curse" then please curse me some more.

A recent Waterloo grad myself, this goes against what I've heard from my peer group. (Most consider it to be a blessing alone) I also think many of the downsides listed in this article have little to do with co-op.

Here's a summary of my pros and cons.

Pros:

- Work experience (2 years)

- Travel (Within Canada, the US and even Europe if you're up for it)

- Money. Far more than we probably deserved at that age.

- Ease of mind regarding future employment. (Speak to any peers who haven't interned or gained any work experience)

- Break from school every four months.

- Break from work every four months.

Cons:

- Travelling can be annoying.

- New cities can be lonely. (I spent a term in Ottawa where I knew literally no-one)

- No summer break.

Other:

- The issues with deadlines and stress mentioned in the article are not related to co-op.

- The issues with stressful work terms are not related to co-op. It will likely be the same once you begin your fulltime work.

I did software coop at UBC, and I can say without a doubt that the coop model is purely an invention of a highly conservative business culture. For those with the skills and the desire, I say skip it. The loss of community with the rest of your class is huge, and the extra time is not worth the money compared to a real post-graduation career.

Additionally, most post-college hiring here in the Bay Area, and elsewhere, is focused on your inherent personal skills, and not on some aspect of "I've done it before". In other words, a coop buys you not much on your first hire out of school, and little post that.

Now this is all bracketed as a computer science coop. If you are seeking to do civil engineering in Canada, by all means stick with coop. Canadian companies are extremely conservative and (typically) won't hire you for what you can do, but what you DID do.

I want to point out that the experience of most of the commenters is in the software engineering field. The situation for co-ops in other programs, such as chemical engineering, is VASTLY different. If you look at the hiring rates there, it's rather abysmal. Talk to any of the chem eng, nano eng, or even some mech eng and you'll find that a whole bunch of them are doing unpaid volunteer positions to get their co-op hours, or working low paying, menial menial jobs - especially for the first few co-ops. It is by far NOT the same experience as software engineers have it.

Also, it's very very common for chem engs (hah, I guess you have figure it out, I'm a chem eng from waterloo) to graduate with significant debt. My first co-op paid 6k as I worked for a professor, my second paid 18$ an hour, third was 15$ an hour, 4th was 22$ an hour, then I got into oil and was paid around 33$ an hour for the last two co-ops. I think I got really lucky - I know many people who just took a term off because they couldn't find a job - and they were sociable and had pretty good marks!

just believe me. It's different in other programs.

Want to add some footnotes, comments, or whatever you want to call them.

1. I wrote this about the program in general, not about co-op terms or internships.

2. I used "curse" in the title because well, it fits in a writing sense (contrasts). Downsides, cons, whatever it is all the same.

3. I understand that real life is working 8 hour days, but at the same time it isn't surrounded by constantly moving and school.

4. Co-op is amazing. As I said I wouldn't trade it for anything, but you have no stability in life. When working full time you aren't moving your life every 4 months. Moving is hard enough as is.

Take my words as you want. This is my experience and how I've felt 4 years in and nothing more. Nothing in life comes without its warts and downsides (or curses if you may).

Former Waterloo CS co-op (96-01) here.

I found that school kicked your ass hard, and work was relatively a break. I got very good at Quake GL, Quake 2, and Unreal Tournament on work terms. When I was at startups we worked long hours, but we also goofed off a lot. At IT shops, life was 9-5.

I understand the tiredness of working an 8 hour day and wanting to do nothing afterwards, but I don't think that's unique co-op, that's just learning how to work an 8+ hour shift. Took a few years to get used to that - I fell asleep at work some afternoons!.. your body needs time to adjust to the new pattern, and you need to learn to structure your meals to fit your needs (eg. breakfast might be mandatory or not, at lunch don't eat foods that put you to sleep at 3pm, carbs for some, protein for others, get some exercise in which actually gives you more end of day energy).

What I would recommend is to actually take a break if you need to, like if you're losing your grip. I.e. take a term or two off, or do an extended work term. You'll be out of sync with your school friends, but if they're you're friends, they'll be in touch. I stretched a 4 month work term into an 8 month term once without any problems - just switched streams.

Eventually I dropped out and didn't finish my degree to work on Wall Street, but that's another story.

Part of this is that Co-Op terms are 16 weeks long. There are 52 weeks in a year, 16*3 eats up 48 weeks, if there are 2 or 3 weeks for Christmas it simply isn't possible to have more than a week or so between the winter and spring/summer and between the spring/summer and fall terms. I feel like 12 weeks is a better length for an internship, but I believe that the University Co-Op rules require that it be at least 16 weeks.

I feel that a lot of the packing and moving stress which the author describes is self-inflicted. If one is moving every four months it makes sense to pay the extra money for a furnished place rather than criss-cross the continent moving one's furniture and cookware around. If one is going from Waterloo across the continent, then it makes sense to take only stuff which one will be able to take on the plane. It might make sense to have a storage locker in Waterloo to throw excess stuff in (books and other entertainment-related things come to mind). The author claims to have done 3 co-op terms in the US, I would hope that he had this down to a science by now. At least some checklists or something to streamline the process. And given the number of Waterloo grads at this point, I would hope that even freshman have moving checklists.

Co-op was a weirdly disorienting time for a lot of reasons, but I've done hundreds of interviews at PagerDuty, and UW co-ops are a lot better for it. I strongly prefer to hire them (Hiring! SF! Toronto! Yay! http://l.euri.ca/1Htzmav ).

Working at 3+ places for 4-8 months isn't a perfect substitute for years of experience, but it's a huge improvement over school projects.

I didn't go to Waterloo, but I predominantly hire from them, and I work with their graduates on a daily basis.

Yes. They get the best work experience. They will have no problems finding a secure job in engineering.

A problem I see is their lack of "university experience" and social growth. For some people with natural social abilities this is not a problem, but for others, university is a once in a lifetime experience to cultivate all aspects of personal growth.

This is very important especially for engineers, where the majority of us are introverts. I was one myself, and I learned invaluable things in university not related to work or school.

These days, it's actually quite easy to find a good job in engineering, no matter what school you're from, as long as you're smart enough to pass technical interviews.

I went to a university basically no one here has ever heard of but The engineering program has the same 4 month on/off schedule. I was a CS student and the CS department has a co-op/internship program that is a bit different, its a minimum 8 months and max 16 months continuous which is really nice. Actually helps you get settled in and accomplish something fairly substantial.

It also, allows you to organize it in a way that you can schedule it to start right before your last semester, so you can potentially start your co-op, complete it, do 1 semester in school then get out in the work force.

I didn't go to Waterloo, but I was a 5 session co-op student at Purdue. What this guy says is pretty much true, but I don't think we highlighted some of the benefits.

I basically lived out of car for 5 years. If it didn't fit in the car, I couldn't take it with me. So it forced me to choose what actually mattered. It also forces you to make friends quickly because you'll be leaving again in a few months. I'm pretty introverted, so this was good experience.

It does prevent you from establishing long term relationships with students not on a co-op rotation. I'd come back to school from working, and I'd always have to catch up on inside jokes, who's dating who, and other silly things that glue groups of people together.

The biggest benefit was the opportunity to work on actual engineering projects with a team of professional engineers and to be mentored. practically one on one. And, of course, I was able to get my foot in the door at a good company and have my career accelerated.

At school, the biggest benefit was that I had a better context for what we were learning in class. I was able to ask really good questions because I had a better understanding of how each topic fit into a larger picture.

Co-oping doesn't give you the typical, Hollywood version of what college is supposed to be like. But who cares? It gives you something much more practical.

Here's where my situation might be a bit different then this guy's. I lived in Vancouver with my parents while going to school at UBC which makes things a lot easier. Family time was most nights for dinner, unless I was at school late. On weekends I was able hang out with my family and friends. This was true during school and co-op. My mom and dad made dinner every night and often threw my laundry in with theirs. I didn't have to do grocery shopping or any of that crap. I did do one co-op away from home (in Ottawa) and it was awesome and I was lucky to have lots of Waterloo students that I met and hung out with. :-) I also did 2 years at Waterloo for a Masters so I know what going to school away from home is like. Like he said, it's good and bad.

In Ontario, it's quite common for kids to be living away from home. That's at least true for almost all the kids at Western Ontario and Waterloo since those towns don't have the population to support the school by locals alone.

So I'm wondering how much of this guy's experience has to do with him being away from his childhood "home"? I wonder how he'd feel going to school at UoT and living at home and doing is co-op terms somewhere else? It depends on your parents I guess...

(I'm old now, so I can call 18-22 year old university students "kids")

I would be interested to see what others have to say about the different co-op program running at the University of Toronto: instead of the multiple 4/8-month co-op terms we have a single 16-month co-op term between 3rd and 4th year. You're encouraged to find your own internships after 1st and 2nd year, but the career centre provides (basically) no aid. If you do however find work those two summers you end up with the same amount of work experience in the end, but with several of those terms (potentially) at the same company back-to-back. I personally chose UofT over Waterloo because I accepted the line of 'companies are more open to hiring students available for a longer time because they get more out of training, so you'll have better opportunities available' at the time. However, I can see many arguments for and against both co-op systems. It's hard for me to be objective about it as I've yet to see the long-term consequences, and I've managed to get pretty great internships every summer plus my coming 16-month term. I'd really like to hear other opinions of people who may never have heard of such a program (both in what's better for the student and what's better for companies who run internship programs)!

Having done co-op myself, one thing most students don't seriously consider is taking extra time to get your degree - also doable for international students like I was.

Don't take a full course load if you feel overloaded and stressed, especially in the upper years. In my case, I used the extra time on multiple side projects and sports, and lived with my SO and cat. My upper years at university were fantastic.

UWindsor student here. I did one of my co-ops in Waterloo at BlackBerry so I got to know the local students fairly well. The problem with Waterloo co-op is how rigid the system is to 4 month only terms.

Four months is barely enough time to get a good grounding of what work is like at that company, and the company itself looses out on training someone and then having them leave after a short period of time. For large companies, that works fine because it's an investment into whether you would be a good full-time hire. But it's not universally helpful.

I've found that 8 month co-ops are the most ideal. Less running around, you spend a good stable 6 months doing work (depending on the company) as a full-time employee would, and the company benefits from it as well.

Co-ops in general though teach you how to pack light and not carry unnecessary baggage. I've always grown up on the move so it was easy for me to adapt, but it helpful for those who don't do it often.

4 months seems a bit short for this continuous cycle. I go to Northeastern University and they do 6 month cycles of work/school. They also start off with a year and a half to two years of classes on a traditional schedule when you first enroll in college. This seems less relentless than the 4 month schedule described at Waterloo.

The most stressful part is preparing for anywhere from 10-20 technical interviews during midterms. There is nothing worst than knowing you have to balance your University degree with future Job prospects. I'm glad I had to go through it because there is no way I would be ready for it in the real world otherwise. Technical interviews are tough and all of the best companies do them. The rewards however, are a blessing indeed:

http://betabeat.com/2014/11/heres-what-tech-companies-pay-th...

Personally, I don't think I would have learned much if it wasn't for co-op. I paid my way through university and gained a lot of valuable experience that helped me land my first job.

What amazes me is how strongly the Waterloo folks do in every field. I bumped into quite a few that excelled at Finance too. Combination of solid skills and humility.

I also have a Waterloo Co-Op degree (biochemistry & math), and can say without a doubt that doing co-op was one of the best decisions of my early professional life.

Many, many years later... through academia and industry jobs, and as someone who hires now, a good co-op program is a phenomenal plus to helping you figure out who you are, professionally speaking.

And it lets you see where the blend between application and theory really lies, with respect to your own personal values.

Kettering University does something similar but it is 3 months school 3 months work for the entirety of your schooling. It is very hectic but if you like things fast paced and the ability to work in your field of study its pretty awesome.

It seems that the author has overlooked the option of staying in Waterloo and working for one of the many companies that are actively looking for talented students.

Edit: I was a UW co-op student and did all my terms in Waterloo.

Anyone else thought this will be about co-operative shop around London Waterloo station area?

I did electrical engineering at UVic (University of Victoria), which uses the same schedule as Waterloo. (As it happens, I actually went on to do a Master's at Waterloo, so although I didn't do co-op there, I'm familiar with their program as well.)

For me, co-op was an unequivocally positive experience. For one thing, as the OP says, school is stressful. More stressful than all but the worst full-time jobs. With a co-op program, you're only in school for four months at a time rather than eight, which really helps; it's a (relatively) short burst of intense focus, rather than a near-year-long slog. Yes you're moving every four months, but the trick there is just to not have too much stuff! For a four month visit somewhere, all you really need are some clothes (generally for only one season, so not your entire wardrobe) and toiletries, a laptop, and maybe a few odds and ends - chess board, deck of cards, whatever, and your phone. That's about it, really. You rent rooms in furnished houses, and just hold off on collecting too much "stuff" until you graduate. (Of course, you still do need somewhere to leave the stuff you don't cart around with you. Parents are generally willing to hold onto it, but if not, a storage unit would suffice.) I've done several work terms with only what I could fit in my suitcase.

I've also found co-op terms to be a fantastic opportunity to meet new people. Ideally there are other co-op students working at the same company - people who are in the same situation as you, transplanted into a new city, looking for new friends. Even if not, there are often meetups for co-op students and that sort of thing where you can meet others from other companies. Especially in cities like Seattle and San Francisco! And sure you don't get paid vacation days, but... I don't know about you, but at least for me, coming from a term of engineering, even having weekends off without a mountain of homework to tackle was like paradise. It was absolutely a break. (And it's not like you wouldn't be working on your off terms without co-op! You'd just be doing it at Burger King or something.)

I was certainly lucky in some ways. My parents lived in Victoria, so I had a convenient place to leave my stuff when I left for work terms. And most of the companies I worked at had large groups of co-op students, so I generally had a good group of people to spend time with. But I think with the right outlook, putting in some effort, it would be possible to have a similarly good experience without those advantages. And then of course, there's this:

> The breadth and depth of the experiences, both academic and life, that I’ve had on co-op would never have happened if I was in a regular program.

Nothing compares to trying a new job in a new city every other four months. You're not necessarily knowledgeable enough through most of your degree (at least in hardware, as I was) to get a lot of technical experience from most work terms - although of course you get some - but what you get a ton of is experience with different types of companies and working environments. It really helped me to figure out what kind of company I wanted to work for, and eventually what kind of company I wanted to run.